Natural Resource and Environmental Conflicts
Workshop at the University of Sheffield, 7th Sept 2015
This workshop will focus on the conflicts around natural resources, with the broader aim being to stimulate dialogue between academic disciplines and practitioners within the fields of conservation, climate and environmental change and international development. This seminar will focus specifically on the tensions and challenges arising from managing natural resources and the plethora of responses across a wide range of actors.
We are pleased to announce two keynote speakers: Professor Rosaleen Duffy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), who will talk about environmental conflicts in conservation projects, and Dr. John-Andrew McNeish from CMI Bergen who will speak about resource sovereignty in Latin America. The broad interests of our speakers will provide a platform for the other participants to discuss and exchange ideas around conflicts and resource politics.
You can register for this seminar via Eventbrite. Please note that registration closes on 01/09/2015.
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/esrc-interdisciplinary-exchanges-natural-resources-and-environmental-conflicts-tickets-18184986785
ABSTRACTS
Resource Sovereignty in Latin America: Popular Efforts to Tame the State and Extractive Development
John-Andrew McNeish, Associate Professor NMBU/Senior Researcher CMI
Latin America has emerged over the last decade as a region of rapid economic growth, poverty reduction and other positive social development indicators. These shifts can largely be attributed to the economic windfall created by high international commodity prices, and particularly those for energy resources. However, whilst positive transformations are widely acknowledged, it has also become evident that the expansion of resource extraction in the region has had a detrimental effect on the environment and become the cause of rising socio-environmental conflict. Throughout the region, local communities contest the right of governments and private corporations to enter, operate and profit from resource extraction in their lived vicinity. In this paper I aim to highlight the way in which contestation is frequently expressed not only on the basis of economic rights and concerns with environmental destruction, but material and social concerns of identity, ecology and contrasting matched with claims for territorial rights and autonomy. Aiming to capture these complex dynamics the paper makes evident the relationship between resource contestation and what I term resource sovereignty. I argue that acknowledgement of the current interplay of resource sovereignty not only provides important insight into drivers of conflict dynamics, but of mechanisms that could deliver legitimate responses and routes to an environmental peace-building.
We are pleased to announce two keynote speakers: Professor Rosaleen Duffy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), who will talk about environmental conflicts in conservation projects, and Dr. John-Andrew McNeish from CMI Bergen who will speak about resource sovereignty in Latin America. The broad interests of our speakers will provide a platform for the other participants to discuss and exchange ideas around conflicts and resource politics.
You can register for this seminar via Eventbrite. Please note that registration closes on 01/09/2015.
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/esrc-interdisciplinary-exchanges-natural-resources-and-environmental-conflicts-tickets-18184986785
ABSTRACTS
Resource Sovereignty in Latin America: Popular Efforts to Tame the State and Extractive Development
John-Andrew McNeish, Associate Professor NMBU/Senior Researcher CMI
Latin America has emerged over the last decade as a region of rapid economic growth, poverty reduction and other positive social development indicators. These shifts can largely be attributed to the economic windfall created by high international commodity prices, and particularly those for energy resources. However, whilst positive transformations are widely acknowledged, it has also become evident that the expansion of resource extraction in the region has had a detrimental effect on the environment and become the cause of rising socio-environmental conflict. Throughout the region, local communities contest the right of governments and private corporations to enter, operate and profit from resource extraction in their lived vicinity. In this paper I aim to highlight the way in which contestation is frequently expressed not only on the basis of economic rights and concerns with environmental destruction, but material and social concerns of identity, ecology and contrasting matched with claims for territorial rights and autonomy. Aiming to capture these complex dynamics the paper makes evident the relationship between resource contestation and what I term resource sovereignty. I argue that acknowledgement of the current interplay of resource sovereignty not only provides important insight into drivers of conflict dynamics, but of mechanisms that could deliver legitimate responses and routes to an environmental peace-building.
